Torim

Side-Quest

The group made their way down to the southern “suburbs” of Carridoon to investigate reports of missing children. Upon arriving in the small hamlet, they discovered that children had been disappearing from the area like clockwork; every Sunday to be exact. At this point in time, 3 children had been taken but one of those children had found their way back to the hamlet a week after her abduction. It had already been a week since the last child was abducted and another instance was due this very night, therefore the group decided to investigate the returned child and her family.

After knocking on the returned child’s house, the door was answered by the young girl herself who appeared to be about 9 years old. Her name was Jocelyn and she acted more mature for age and relatively odd. The child told the group her mother was in Carridoon and she had been left alone. The girl invited the group in and they investigated the house finding odd dolls and eventually markings under the child’s bed. Shortly later the mother, Addey, returned to the house and denied being in Carridoon at all. The mother revealed that the child had been speaking a strange language during her sleep. After looking around a bit more and asking questions of the mom, the group left to go investigate the other houses.

The other houses had no sign of struggle within the childrens room. However, the group found some light claw marks on the outside of one of the children’s bedrooms and attempted to follow the resulting trail into the woods. However, after about half a day search the group lost the trail and returned to the hamlet. Due to limited leads and information, the group decided to organize a stake out that night to both protect the remaining two children in the town and to hopefully catch the culprit.

The group convinced the two remaining families with young children to not leave for Carridoon and instead sleep over at one of the family’s house. The group setup their defenses and waited. Unluckily a horrible storm began that night and heavily obscured the area. Throughout the night odd happenings occurred, such as lights in the distance or neighbors and dogs trying to enter through the front door, but the group never opened the door or left the house. After awhile what appeared to be some invisible creature began breaking through the windows and trying to enter the house. With some quick thinking and further defenses set with beds and magic, the group managed to wound the creature and prevent it from entering the house. Afterwards it ran off into the forest.

The next day the group pursued the creature into the woods. Again they began losing the trail but suddenly they realized that magic had been obscurring their vision and they traced the trail to a small hovel in the woods. Outside the hovel was a fire pit with what appeared to be a small skeleton over it. After stealthily investigating the hovel, it was shown a Hag, clothed in the skin of her victims, lived in it. She appeared to have been stealing and eating children from the town. The group strategically broke into the house and fought the Hag in a violent magical battle. However, the group succeeded in subduing the Hag and questioned her. It was revealed that the Hag had eaten ALL 3 of the children and that she had sister Hags who would revenge her. They group disposed of the hag and quickly hurried back to the town.

Once at the town, the group told the town what had happened to the children and confronted Addey and Jocelyn privately in a house. The group convinced Addey that Jocelyn was either a Hag or some dark manifestation of the Hag’s power. They took Addey and Jocelyn to Carridoon and turned Jocelyn into the guard, warning them about the circumstances. The guards paid the group for solving the missing children issue and for killing the Hag.

Afterwards the group headed to their inn and met with Hroth who had assembled a new trade caravan. The caravan consisted of two twin elves name Kaira and Kairo Lorel and a cheeky halfling named Zander who had a dragonborn friend named Gesh. After meeting the new caravan, the group prepared to leave for Whitestone the next day.

Merchant Intrigue

The adventure began with our group traveling on a trade caravan to the great trade hub, Carridoon. The caravan was attacked by what first appeared to be bandits. After the group defeated the bandits, they discovered that the bandits were in actuality assassins sent to retrieve Aurora Heartlilly and that Aurora had a 5,000 gp bounty on her head. No one in the caravan survived except for the group, Hroth Dun, and Hroth’s apprentice, Jared Forth.

The group arrived in Carridoon and spent the day stocking up on supplies, buying new cloaks, and nursing their wounds, in addition to selling the assassins they had captured, until they were summoned via messenger to talk to a high merchant of Carridoon, Alexander Kor.

Alexander Kor hired the group to investigate a matter for the Merchant’s Guild which involved a bandit group called The Axe’s Hand. The bandits had been targeting high profile merchant caravans as if they had inside information. To make matters worse, a fellow high merchant, Numo Farun, had none of his own caravans touched. The group was asked to find evidence of Numo’s involvement and/or put an end to the bandits.

The group set out north of Carridoon to find The Axe’s Hand’s encampment. While searching the woods for the encampmne, the group was attacked by a massive phase spider. After deftly sending the spider back to the Ethereal Plane, the group found the bandit encampment. The Axe’s Hand’s encampment was quite entrenched within a mountainous valley. However, the group snuck past the wooden gate and infilitrated the encampment during the late hours of the night. The group managed to stealthily invade the bandit leader’s tent and retrieve letters from him that spoke of Numo’s involvement.

The group returned back to Carridoon and delivered the letters resulting in Numo’s arrest. A short time later the group was contacted by Shyan Vesp who summoned the group to meet with Numo in jail. Numo revealed to the group that the bandits were likely a plan devised by their hirer, Alexander Kor, to imprison Numo so he could not continue running against Alexander for the Carridoon Council Seat. Numo asked the group to use Aurora’s influence to speed up his trial so that Numo would be found innocent faster and be able to return to running against Alexander.

The group chose to help Numo and therefore went to Numo’s contact’s house; the house of Lady Anaka Versailles. Lady Anaka was a beautiful yet tom boyish lady who teach and dress the group for the upcoming high merchant dinner later that night. Lady Anaka transported the group to the dinner and introduced them to High Judge Viren so they could please Numo’s case to be resolved faster. High Judge Viren was impressed by the group and agreed to speed along the trial. Meanwhile Marlowe was approached by a woman who carried him off to be alone in another room. This woman was revealed to be some shapechanger who trapped Marlowe in the room alone and stole his appearance. The shapechanger then attempted to poison Aurora’s drink during the dinner but was caught by the group. However, the group’s trust in Marlowe was sound, resulting in Alder drinking the poisoned drink, almost resulting in his own death. Aurora and Sheena quickly tied up the imposter Marlowe and then successfully stabilized and healed Alder.

The group left the high dinner wondering what to do with their captured “Marlowe” who they had yet to realize was an imposter. Thankfully moments later the real Marlowe, who had been recently released from his locked room, caught up to the group. With his disguise blown, the imposter Marlowe escaped down an alley, jumped up on a rooftop, and eventually became lost in a seedy bar in The Slums of Carridoon. The group gave success chase but with the shapechanger’s ability to change appearance, they lost him in the rowdy crowd at the seedy bar. Following all this activity, the group went back to the inn and rested.

The next day the group verified with High Judge Viren that Numo’s case had been accelerated, established plans with Hroth to set off for Whitestone in a couple of days, and then went to the town’s bulletin board to see if they could help in any way. The bulletin board spoke of giant’s in the north and missing children in the south. The group chose to investigate the missing children and thus began their next adventure.